There are a number of ways to brew coffee or tea, and a number of ways to extract substances into fats or oils. The French press coffee machine is one such machine which is widely used today.
In a French press coffee maker, dry coffee grounds are placed into a carafe and then water is heated in a separate device and then added to the grounds. The coffee brews statically or the coffee can also be manually stirred while brewing. After the brewing is complete, the coffee grounds are filtered out and the beverage is served. Similarly, tea leaves can be placed in a carafe and the above process repeated for brewing tea or, one can use any food substance (herbs, etc.) and any liquid, including oils or fats such as butter to extract flavors from the food substance into the liquid.
Traditionally, when using a French press for coffee or tea, the process is usually manual requiring the operator to manually stir and availability to a separate kettle with which water can be heated. Moreover, water temperature begins dropping quickly once in the French press thereby quickly removing the coffee grounds from a temperature where the operator may feel optimal extraction can occur. Since the process is manual with a French press, the operator must also gauge the time to stir and when to serve, a process that is open for errors in timing and could cause the operator to over or under extract the coffee, tea, or other brewed liquid. It is also the case that after pouring a single serving from a French press, the remaining coffee in the French press quickly cools as there is no heating device to keep the temperature stable and at an optimal serving temperature.
Tea brewing is an ancient art incorporating multiple different methods for controlling the temperature of the water against the tea leaves. While many people think the variety of tea pots that have been created are for visual appeal, it is actually the case that certain teas are designed for certain pots because of the thermal properties of such pots. However, even with this thoughtful design, the ability to use materials and shape to fully control a thermal profile is limited at best. The manual process of tea brewing means that the full capability of perfecting a thermal profile for a particular type of tea is generally beyond the ability of the traditional static process.
This invention also is impactful to the brewing of cold brew coffee. Cold brew coffee brews around room temperature for extended periods of time, in many cases up to 24 hours. Usually, the operator has little control over the temperature of the brewing temperature and stirring for ordinary consumers is manual. Ideally, the operator would be able to slightly heat the cold brewed coffee in order to quicken the extraction process; however, because of brewing at ambient temperatures, this leads to extended times. Brewing of cold brewed coffee varies depending upon the ambient temperature and also the extended time to extract coffee from a statically brewed environment. The operator must also remember the time when he or she began brewing the coffee and given the extended time periods this can easily create operator error.
This invention is also impact for extraction of substances into oils and fats. Currently, to infuse flavors into oils or fats, the process is often done statically or by using crude equipment such as crock pots or low powered burners. As an example, in parts of the country where marijuana is legal, marijuana is often infused into butter for use in baking via a long steep in crock pots. This statically brewed process can lead to clumping of the marijuana because of the static brewing process. Manual stirring can help the process but requires attention of the operator and can be prone to operator error. Also, because timing is extended, it requires the operator to remember the time in order to avoid over or under extraction and the creation of a consistent product.
There are inventions which combine temperature measurement, magnetic stirring, and infrared diode heating for laboratory experiments involving fluids. These laboratory devices are relatively uncommon have never transferred into the area of food preparation nor have they ever been used for coffee, tea, or other brewing usages. There are no prior art devices which use induction heating as the heating mechanism for the fluid. This is a significant advantage since induction heating is vastly more efficient than infrared heating and hence the new invention represents a significant leap forward for the efficiency of the heating step.
It is therefore the objective of the present invention to create an automatic brewing device that allows for brewing coffee, tea, other warm beverages requiring heating and mixing, or extracting oils in a French press-like carafe but which overcomes the disadvantages of manual stirring and lack of precise temperature control along with the ability to add precise timing to the stirring and heating in order to enhance the operators knowledge of the time spent brewing and minimize failures of timing.